


Sweet and Fiery

by MagusLibera



Series: Any Happy Stories [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Future Team Arrow, Gen, Growing Up, Mia-centric, Next Generation, Protectiveness, Quarantine and Chill Fic Drive (Arrow TV 2012), Smoak Queen Family, Vigilantism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23418421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagusLibera/pseuds/MagusLibera
Summary: Mia is very protective of her loved ones. Her drive to keep them safe and together has always been one of the defining things in her life.Mia's protectiveness grows into something more as she gets older. A need to do something. A need to change the world around her. A need for a hood.Can be read as a one-shot or as part of the Any Happy Stories/SCoM universe. Previously titledThe Protector and the Vigilante.
Relationships: Minor Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak - Relationship, Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak, background Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Series: Any Happy Stories [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601401
Comments: 21
Kudos: 40
Collections: Quarantine and Chill Fic Drive 2020





	Sweet and Fiery

**Author's Note:**

> It's the end of March! Can you believe it? Finally. This month has lasted a year.
> 
> I wrote a Mia fic and it was conveniently about the next generation of Team Arrow so I used it for the Q&C fic drive because I could. *pats self on back*
> 
> I hope you like it!

Mia does not remember a time before she knew she wanted to be a fighter. As a child, she would always bond with her dad over the stories of him as the Green Arrow, out there saving his city and later, his multiverse. In daily life, it was often her mom she was closer to. A lot of her inner fire and general skills are in line with her mother’s, most notably their ineptitude in the kitchen, but Mia never took to learning in the way that her mother and siblings had. She never liked being stuck in a classroom, with nowhere to go and being forced to listen to some dull lesson.

Her stubborn and unwavering nature had presented itself early on. It frustrated her dad no end as he had tried to get her to behave, to listen, but she ignored his every word. She would get angry and run from the house, darting into the forest and climbing the nearest tree to hide for a while. Then she would go back inside, apologise and beg her father to tell her a story and he would.

*************************

By the time she was four, her rambunctiousness had grown out of control. With her boundless energy she would storm through the house, climbing on the furniture and hurdling over onto sofas. Once, she tried to flip like her father had described doing in one of his stories and it led to her dislocating his arm. That incident was what pushed her parents into letting her learn how to fight. She had been begging for it for years, practising archery with one of William’s old plastic toys and trying to emulate the Green Arrow in all aspects of her life but they had always denied her.

Later, she learnt that their denial had mostly been due to Oliver’s fear of training her. He was simultaneously afraid of being too harsh on her and hurting her and making her hate him and also of being too soft on her so as not to hurt her and sending her out into the world ill prepared. But Mia left them no other choice, so her dad had started training her.

His fears had been right, he often did go too easy on her and that is why they called in an old friend to help with her training. Aunty Nyssa. She called Oliver Al Sah-him and Felicity Once-Sister-Wife and did not seem to know how to deal with children at all but still, to Mia she was amazing. As soon as Mia began training, she knew exactly where she fit in.

Ever since Mia started talking, she has been protective. Specifically of her siblings. It started off with William and mostly presented as possessiveness. She would hog his attention for herself and get upset whenever he was taken away, especially when he was taken from her sight by anybody else. Most people put it down to her wanting him all to herself, but her closer family know better. They know that it was about her wanting to be able to see him, to know that he was safe. It never changed, she just learnt how to better deal with it as she grew older.

When the twins were born, it happened again but in a different way. She and Tommy had a deep rivalry as children, both of them having inherited their father’s pig-headedness, but a large number of their arguments were driven over who got to play protector to Lucas as he sat and played quietly on his own. Mia would demand to do it, claiming the older sibling card. Tommy would retaliate with the twin excuse. Neither of them would budge.

It would annoy Mia to no end as she would never want to be the villain trying to hurt her little brothers, she always wanted to keep them safe. She wanted to be the Green Arrow in the game.

She and Tommy did not reach an accord until the birth of Ada, their littlest and most precious sibling. A universally agreed fact. Ada’s differences made her young life just that much harder and more confusing and every single one of her older siblings was desperate to keep her happy and safe. So Mia and Tommy were able to agree that both of them were needed to keep Ada protected from the world.

*************************

The protectiveness that Mia feels for Ada still scares her sometimes. She feels it for all of her loved ones, particularly William and Lucas and some of her cousins – and, yes, even Tommy – and it is always intense. It is always terrifying to know that they are out in the world, and that anything could be happening to them without her there to keep them safe. To know that she is helpless. But with Ada it is on a whole different level. There are so many more things that could hurt Ada, so many more people who would _want_ to, and it is not just terrifying, it is _petrifying_.

Sometimes, Mia can feel herself struggling to breathe at the mere thought of what could be happening to Ada at any given moment. Sometimes it is so bad that she has to call her little sister just to check that she is okay. Ada always is. She is the strongest out of all of them. And the Clayton Smoak Queens are some of the strongest people around.

It makes sense that Mia soon finds herself unable to keep her protective instincts contained to her family. She is, after all, her father’s daughter and if the words of Felicity Smoak Queen are to be believed, then she is basically her dad’s personality double. So by the time she is thirteen, she has a precise plan for her life. She also knows that she will never be able to tell any of her loved ones about her plan, or they will try to stop her.

She is going to be the next Green Arrow.

*************************

Original Team Arrow did a fantastic job in clearing up Star City. They really did. After the Crisis, Oliver and Felicity had, with John Diggle, dealt with the Ninth Circle threat, retrieved all copies of the Archer program and almost cleaned up the streets of the city fully in the process. All before the birth of the twins. A miraculous feat, but also a temporary one. As excellent a job as they had done, it had also been temporary. No city can remain perfect forever, especially with subpar people left in charge of protecting it, and Mia knows that she has the training, the expertise and enough knowledge from all of her father’s stories to keep the city safe again.

She tells nobody. She says that she does not know what she wants to do with her life and claims that she is taking it day by day. She finishes high school at sixteen and defers from university for two years to focus on her training. She works harder with Nyssa and her father (who is mostly over his fear of hurting her but still works with her more on skill based combat like archery than on hand to hand combat) than she ever has before and she takes the time to find and study every single bit of footage of her father and his teams from the day the _Gambit_ went down onwards.

That is how Connor finds out.

Connor has started working for his father, John, at their secret undercover agency but he still finds the time to regularly come around to her house unannounced. Her best friend always drops in for a visit whenever he can, but Mia is so engrossed in a particular scene of the Hood taking down a veritable army of twelve men that she fails to notice him enter. She is a hideous liar, another thing that her father passed on to her, and eventually, she just gives up and lets him smile knowingly and give her pointers on how he would approach the situation on screen. They do not even discuss it, they just automatically assume that the two of them are in it together, just like with everything.

Eventually, Mia starts a business degree at Star City University. She convinces William to let her live at his place, figuring that sneaking in and out of his giant apartment every night will be far easier than sneaking in and out of the SCU dorms. She makes sure to take classes that will be in the afternoon wherever possible so that she can shift herself to a nocturnal schedule and fight to her best standard without exhaustion weighing her down.

Connor gets himself assigned to a mission in Star City too so that he can be her backup wherever possible. The Spartan to her Green Arrow.

They start off small, just taking down minor criminals in simple black clothes in order to get a feel for their dynamic, for the city. Then they start to build up to bigger targets. It catches the attention of the news.

*************************

In hindsight, Mia does feel stupid for not thinking about it before. William is the opposite of stupid. In fact, he is the second smartest Clayton Smoak Queen kid. So when a bow and arrow wielding vigilante started to show up on the news just weeks after his kid sister moved in with him and adopted a nocturnal schedule, he is naturally suspicious. He sets a trap. He catches Mia in the act.

There is a long moment where she thinks he is going to call their father and rat her out. Instead, he pulls out a computer, berates her for going out without technical backup, and she learns all about his hacking exploits over the last few years. Turns out the vigilante genes run strong in their family too.

Mia always finds it remarkable just how alike William and their mom are. He looks nothing like her, for obvious reasons, and Mia knows that Felicity did not enter his life until he was eleven, and that she was not a permanent fixture until later, but he has still managed to grow into her mini-me. William likes to remind her that she is Felicity’s double in every physical way, but that she is so alike Oliver that it scares him sometimes.

*************************

With their team up to three, they start to make some real progress. They also decide that they need a proper base that is not Connor’s mission headquarters slash bedroom. The Bunker is out, having been commandeered by the city’s Canary network years before, but William manages to find the original lair of OTA. The Foundry.

It is perfect. William even makes them all costumes. Mia has never felt more empowered than when she is dressed in the green leather of her vigilante garb.

And then, on one mission, they run into a flock of Canaries. Three girls, all dressed in the signature black leather of the group, hunting for the criminals in the city. Mia’s eyes roll. If they had been doing a good enough job, then she would not have needed to come here in the first place. She reminds herself that it is not the fault of the actual network so much as it is the fault of their leaders. Some might even have potential.

Mia’s plan is to bypass the flock altogether, but Connor stops in front of them, mouth agape beneath the metal of his helmet, “Sara?” he gasps.

One of the girls, the one on the left, blinks, “Connor?” she says. Simultaneously, to the protests of their teams, both of them take their masks off. It is Sara Diggle. Who looks around, her eyes stopping on Mia. “Mia!” the Canary rushes forwards, swooping the younger girl into her arms. “Zoe! Look, it’s Connor and Mia!” and the central canary removes her mask too, revealing William’s best friend, Zoe Ramirez.

The third canary is a Star City native called Bianca. Fortunately, she is not another person from Mia’s past because Mia does not think that she could handle any more of her loved ones having a secret identity, but she completes their team nonetheless.

None of the canaries leave the network, but they clearly have the same qualms about the leadership as Mia does and so they agree to work with Mia’s Team Arrow to take on the criminals of the city in a more effective way.

And so, Future Team Arrow is born.

**Author's Note:**

> This week is Autism Awareness Week. The National Autistic Society ([@Autism](https://twitter.com/Autism) on Twitter) is a great place to start if you want to know more about what it's like to be autistic or love somebody who is and my dms are open on Twitter if you want any recommendations or just to chat about anything. I'm [@MagusLibera](https://twitter.com/MagusLibera).
> 
> Please be careful if you're planning to do anything for April Fool's tomorrow. There are a lot of people who will struggle with that and there's a lot not to joke about right now, so have fun but be kind about it <3
> 
> Please stay safe, wash your hands and stay inside as much as possible. Please remember your fellow humans who will also be going through a tough time right now.


End file.
